The meeting came through four intermediaries and a lawyer.
He'd told Felicia about the Aldrich window that morning. Not all of it, just that Fisk's representative had made contact and he was going to take the meeting. She'd asked one question: "Do you need me there?" He'd said no. She'd said: "Then I'll be at the warehouse. Call when it's done." That was the whole conversation. He'd thought, walking to the subway, about how much easier things were when the person you told something to responded by asking the right question and then doing the right thing.
He'd been expecting it. The form it took was a lunch reservation at a restaurant in Tribeca, confirmed in his name through the third intermediary, a note attached that said only: Tuesday, 1 PM. Mr. Aldrich will be joining you. No other explanation. The name Aldrich meant nothing to him. The form of the invitation meant everything.
He went. He arrived early, took a table with sight lines to both exits, ordered water, and waited.
Aldrich was sixty, compact, a suit that cost more than the restaurant's monthly rent, the practiced stillness of someone who had been having this conversation in various forms for decades. He sat down without ceremony and ordered nothing and looked at Dan with the quality of a person who made their living reading people across tables.
"Mr. Cross," he said. Not The Contractor. The civilian name. A demonstration, neatly delivered.
Dan held his expression. "Mr. Aldrich."
"I'll be direct," Aldrich said. "Mr. Fisk is aware of your operation. He's been following it with interest for some time. Your capabilities are considerable. Your discretion is documented. Your record, particularly the South Bronx incident, indicates a level of operational capacity that is genuinely rare." He paused. "Mr. Fisk would like to offer you a place in the new structure."
"What does that mean specifically."
"It means the work you do continues as you do it, with the addition of occasional coordination on targets that Mr. Fisk has an interest in avoiding. Or pursuing. Depending on the situation." Aldrich folded his hands on the table. "It means protection. What SHIELD currently has on you does not grow. What the NYPD has does not grow. You operate cleanly inside an ecosystem that Mr. Fisk manages."
"And the cost."
"A percentage. Modest. Commensurate with the protection provided. And availability. When Mr. Fisk requires a specific capability, he would like to know it's available."
Dan looked at him. The restaurant moved around them, lunch service, the sound of other conversations, the ordinary texture of a Tuesday in Tribeca. "What happens if I decline."
Aldrich was quiet for a moment. Not uncomfortable. Precise. "Mr. Fisk has found that declining is rarely the final answer. People generally reconsider when they understand the full picture." He produced a card, slid it across the table. "Take two weeks. Look at the picture. We'll speak again."
Dan took the card. He looked at it. A phone number, nothing else. "Two weeks," he said.
"Two weeks," Aldrich confirmed, stood without hurry, and left.
Dan sat for a moment with the card and his water and the ambient sound of the restaurant. Then he pocketed the card and paid for the water and walked back out into the August afternoon.
He stood on the Tribeca pavement and let the afternoon run around him for a moment. People on their way somewhere, the city doing what it did, indifferent. The meeting had gone exactly as expected. Fisk's people were good at meetings. The form was impeccable, the threat nested so cleanly inside the courtesy that someone who hadn't been paying attention might have walked away thinking they'd received an offer rather than an ultimatum.
He had two weeks. In that two weeks he needed to go to 1943, retrieve a second vial of super-soldier serum from a HYDRA operative, survive the physical consequences of doing so, receive an aircraft carrier, purchase an airfield, and decide what to say to Wilson Fisk.
He called Felicia. "It's done," he said.
"How was he."
"Professional. Clean. The threat was well dressed."
"Two weeks?"
"Two weeks." He started walking toward the subway. "I'll tell you the rest tonight."
"I'll cook," she said, and hung up.
He walked to the subway. He had work to do.
He went through the meeting on the platform while he waited for the train. Not the content of it, he had that. The texture of it. Aldrich had been good. Unhurried, measured, nothing wasted. The threat had been dressed so cleanly in the courtesy that someone else might have walked away thinking the lunch had gone well. He hadn't missed it. But he'd noticed that Aldrich hadn't tried to hide it either, not really. Fisk didn't need to hide it. He was operating from a position where the threat didn't need concealment because everyone in the room already understood what it was.
That was useful information. A person who didn't bother to hide his leverage was a person who was confident the leverage was sufficient. Fisk thought The Contractor would fold. The question was what happened when he didn't.
He'd find out. He had two weeks to be ready for it.